The Blind Man of Bethsaida

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. [Mark 8:22].

They said his name was Jesus.
I heard it first as rumor,
then as hope in voices I had trusted
all my life.

My brother took my elbow—
the familiar grip I'd known since childhood—
and said, "We're taking you to him."

I did not ask if he could heal.
By then I'd learned which questions
hurt more than the darkness.

But when we reached the edge of sound and crowd,
different hands found mine.
Not my brother's.
Gentle, yes, but strange.

"Come," he said,
and led me away from everything I knew—
the voices fading,
the village sounds growing distant.

I had lived my whole life
within the radius of known voices.
Now I was walking beyond them
with a man I could not see.

He stopped.
I felt his hands on my face—
warm, deliberate—
and then he asked,
"Do you see anything?"

I opened my eyes.
I had forgotten I had eyes to open.

And then—
shapes.
Movement.
Light that wasn't light but presence,
forms that shifted, swayed.

"I see…" I started,
searching for words
that had never needed to exist before.

"I see people.
But they look like trees.
Walking."

Was this sight?
This confusion of shadow and substance,
this world where nothing held its proper form?

I had imagined seeing would be clarity—
darkness lifted all at once,
the world appearing whole and known.

But this?
People-trees, tree-people,
everything moving but nothing distinct.

I could not tell
if this was gift or cruel joke,
if I should thank him
or confess my disappointment.

Was this all there was?
This strange half-world
between blindness and sight?

He touched my eyes again.

And then—
Everything.

The bark of trees held texture I had never imagined,
each ridge and shadow its own small geography.

Faces.
Not voices with bodies attached,
but faces—

my brother's weathered forehead,
the lines around his eyes
that matched the worry in his voice
when he called my name.

I looked down at my own hands—
these hands that had learned the world through touch—
and saw them foreign, familiar:

dust in the creases of my palms,
dirt beneath my nails,
the map of my own history
written in scars I'd never seen.

The sky was wider than sound had told me.
Distance was real.
Color was… I had no words.

He said, "Don't go back to the village.
Don't tell them yet."

But how could I be silent
when everything was speaking?

I stood there,
outside the place I'd lived my whole life,
and wondered—

What else have I been walking past?
What else is there to see
that I'm still learning how to notice?

He healed my eyes.
But now I think he's teaching me to look.